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Comment by sickofparadox | Hacker News Reader

It's likely that a lot of people don't understand just how huge these ships are. I'd imagine that much of HN doesn't have a ton of firsthand experience with shipping yards or even close friends/relatives that work on these things. In my experience, almost nothing hides just how large it is than a giant ship.

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My family and I drove through the Ports of LA/Long Beach on vacation last summer. A port is basically an entire city dedicated to getting things in/out of the water. Takes 15-20 minutes to drive through. You can't imagine the number of cranes/lifts. It's worth the drive through.

This ship was carrying ~5,000 TEU (Trailer Equivalent Units). Imagine 5,000 fully packed semi trucks crashing into the single upright of that bridge.

Even at 7.5 knots (~10mph) the bridge stood no chance.

Would it even stand a chance at 1 mph? If not, what is the speed that would make it imaginable for the bridge not to collapse?

That's fair. If you don't live in a major port city you likely don't understand.

Maybe we should reframe it to a more familiar territory. It could be the equivalent of a second tier unsophisticated, unsuspecting, dated website with a relatively small amount of traffic hitting it being hit by a state sponsored actor DDoS attack and expecting the website to survive.

I'm with you on this one, I grew up around boats and remember the dread of even getting near a containership in a 16 foot Boston Whaler. That fear was more primal and daunting than sailing home during a tornado watch.

When I was a kid, we would go fishing off of pier near a port. The size of carriers and tankers is staggering. And if you get close enough to see numbers and lines near the front of the boat, you realize that fully loaded these things are 30 40 ft underwater.

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